


A Handful of Smoke

by eighteenavenues



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eighteenavenues/pseuds/eighteenavenues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been silent for a very long time. The silence is everywhere, stopping up his ears like pieces of snowy cotton. It's suffocating and crushing and so easily rectified if only he were to open his mouth and speak. He doesn't. </p>
<p>Post-war drabble</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Handful of Smoke

He's standing in the garden because that seems like as good a place as any to stand in right now. The moon is shining and he doesn't remember when it was exactly that the sun sank, but it seems like it'll never come back. The night is cold and he is numb, but he's not sure if those two facts are related.

It's been silent for a very long time. The silence is everywhere, stopping up his ears like pieces of snowy cotton. It's suffocating and crushing and so easily rectified if only he were to open his mouth and speak. He doesn't.

The moon seems fake in the sky, a white balloon that could deflate with a sharp squealing noise- that relates to something, someone, he knows. He doesn't care to remember who. They're gone now. Gone, gone, gone. Turning to dust just to be blown away in the wind, scattered and forgotten. One day he'll be scattered by the wind, forgotten just as easily as everyone swore to remember him.

What were they all fighting for, again? He can't quite recall. And it's silly but all the stars look like the holes in a colossal sieve that's restraining all the light of the heavens, just letting minuscule pinpricks through to Earth. And he misses something terribly, a feeling long forgotten, and it takes him an eternity to put his finger on exactly what he feels. He misses being free.

There's no one around for miles who is still awake. The world is wide empty, so alone and empty and filled with endless possibilities that all seem as impossible as actually being able to grasp a handful of stars. He raises his fist to the sky but they stream through his clenched fingers like perfect grains of sand. He can't catch smoke, just like he can't close his eyes without a thousand images flickering blame across the darkened screens.

It's so quiet.

"Thought I'd find you here,"

Noise ruptures the glass moment and it's like the sun has risen and he can finally see. She's wearing a baggy white shirt and nothing else. It rides high on her thigh and he can't think about anything except how much she glows in the moonlight. Her legs look like they could go on forever, maybe take a few long strides and she'd be somewhere else, somewhere better than here. Is any place actually any better than here? The stars tease her hair and blink as it floats in wisps around her pale face.

"It's too quiet," she says, and he's never heard anything more true. She takes his hand, her small palm pressing the calloused surface of his, her fingers gently running over his knuckles in a circular fashion that seems rather hypnotizing. "I'm so tired of the silence," she tells him, and he realizes he is, too.

She pulls his arm, gently guiding him to the ground where they sit together in complacent quiet. He doesn't expect any words and she doesn't expect any saving, and they both feel broken and incomplete but they're not actually unhappy. And it's the first time in a long time that she hasn't felt like she was about to shatter into a thousand shards of a child in dress-up clothing. But she hates him because he's supposed to say something, anything, and it's all supposed to be alright again. She's alright, but nobody else is, and he was supposed to fix all that.

It's been a long year. It's been a very long, very cold year.

"I love you," he tells her, whispering apologies to the stars for somehow being okay even when everything isn't and so many people are dust.

They forgive him, and she does too. And, somehow, it doesn't seem so silent anymore.

And he feels warmth returning to his bones.


End file.
